Piano technique

The bare word technique, when applied to piano playing,seems often to give people an erroneous impression of its real significance. It seems to mean to them just the power of being able to play very rapidly, and also to perform very difficult passages, upon the keyboard, and often the word seems to carry with it a strange sort of odium to certain kinds of music-lovers.

About piano technique

“A wonderful technician,” they cry, about some pianist, “but nothing more.” How can this prejudice against great development of technique have arisen? I think that it is just because technique is sometimes considered as meaning only that one-sided capability of being able to move the fingers and hands with special agility “digital dexterity”, as the critics call it! That particular capacity is no doubt a very important and necessary branch of technique on the piano, but it is only one small part of the whole immense subject; and the pianist who has given all his attention to that branch alone can certainly not be called in the best sense of the word a great technician, nor can he arrive at the highest results with only that development.